RANCHO CUCAMONGA: Dogs' top-notch noses sniff out crime

RANCHO CUCAMONGA: Dogs’ top-notch noses sniff out crime

San Bernardino County Sheriff's Deputy Mike Mason follows the lead of Deja, a 3-year-old female bloodhound, as she follows a scent trail during a search-and-rescue training exercise at Central Park in Rancho Cucamonga on Wednesday, March 25.

ABOUT THE DOGS

What: Bloodhounds assigned to the San Bernardino County sheriff's station in Rancho Cucamonga.

Age: 3 1/2. They are sisters from the same litter.

Duties: They use their keen sense of smell to help catch criminals and find missing people.

Education: The sheriff's department purchased them from Georgia K9 NTC, a police dog training school with locations in Georgia and South Carolina.

Cost: $12,000 each

Source: San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department

Once the harness is on, the fun stops and work starts for Deja.

The bloodhound walks a few yards with her handler and sniffs a knife left next to a dirt pile by a fleeing murder suspect.

Deputy Mike Mason gives her the command. Then the search through thick shrubs is on. After 30 minutes hunting for the scent, the dog alerts her partner that they’re getting close.

“Hands up! Hands up!” Mason yells to a woman hiding under a bridge.

The K-9 jumps up on her chest, signaling they’ve found their target.

“Good girl,” he tells the dog as he gives her a mouthful of treats.

The woman wasn’t an actual criminal, but a prop in a weekly training exercise to keep Deja sharp and ready to catch real law breakers.

Deja and her sister, Dare, are 3 ½-year-old red bloodhounds assigned to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department’s Rancho Cucamonga station.

The pair is expected to be joined soon by Smokey, a 2-year-old yellow Labrador retriever specially trained to detect narcotics. Smokey isn’t an official crew member yet, but Mayor L. Dennis Michael introduced him during his March 3 State of the City address.

“I’m sure some of you have seen a four-legged deputy wandering around,” Michael told the audience.

The plan is for Smokey and his handler to go to schools, parks and other places in search of illegal drugs, Michael said.

“He is an efficient crime-fighting tool,” Michael said.

The two bloodhounds have helped find more than 40 missing people and suspected criminals since joining the force in November 2013. They respond to 30 to 50 calls a month, sheriff’s officials say.

“These dogs’ noses are better than anybody else’s nose,” Mason said during a break from training. “They solve puzzles. They lead us to people that we need to find whether they’re bad guys or missing persons.”

DOGS WITH ‘DRIVE’

The sheriff’s department purchased the dogs from Georgia K9 NTC, a police dog training school with locations in Georgia and South Carolina. Retired K-9 handler Jeff Schettler trained the dogs when they were puppies. Mason and Dare’s handler, Deputy Ryan Girard, spent two weeks at a handler’s school in Edisto Island, S.C., before picking up the dogs.

“These dogs have got the drive for it, the stamina,” Girard said. “Not all dogs are cut out to be police dogs.”`

The city of Rancho Cucamonga paid $12,000 for each of the dogs, including handler training.

Girard and Mason proposed the idea of bringing back police dogs, which the department eliminated about 15 years ago due to budget cuts.

Because of their keen sense of smell, bloodhounds are a step above German Shepherds and Malinois breeds that police agencies have traditionally used to catch criminals. Bloodhounds can track a human scent over several miles, even when the trail is a few hours old and covers hard terrain such as cement and asphalt, he said.

“There’s almost no liability when you deploy a bloodhound because there’s less likely to be a bite at the end,” he said. “Because these dogs are scent specific, they’re going to go to the right person.”

Police dogs and their handlers don’t show up without backup from at least two officers who offer protection if they encounter violence.

Also, bloodhounds love kids and are perfect “goodwill ambassadors” for the department at parades and community events, Girard said.

‘WE RELY ON THEM’

Every year, the dogs must attend two week-long training sessions and pass tests to remain certified, Girard said.

They live with their handlers when they’re not working, but they’re not treated like family pets. They spend most of their free time outside or in kennels in the garage.

They’re on non-grain diets that keep them fit and increase longevity. Girard expects Deja and Dare to be on the force until they’re at least 8 years old.

Dare proved her mettle on a recent evening when a 17-year-old girl with a diminished mental capacity was reported missing in Rancho Cucamonga. The teen hadn’t been taking her medication and wandered off. Using an item from the girl’s bedroom that had her scent, the dog followed its nose and found her in bushes a short distance away.

Deja recently helped nab a thief who stole a woman’s purse at a Starbucks. Deja dashed into some bushes and came out with the stolen dollar bills in her mouth. Moments later, she jumped on a nearby trash can and Mason found the purse and the suspect’s jacket inside.

The dog tracked the smell to a man who deputies were questioning nearby. When she put her paws on his chest, the man lowered his head and uttered an expletive in an admission of guilt, Mason said.

The bond between the pair has grown stronger as they go through new experiences together, including a roll-over crash about two weeks ago.

Neither man nor dog were seriously hurt, he said.

The pair need each other to be successful, Mason said.

“We rely on them to take us to the bad guy or the missing person, and they rely on us to keep them safe,” he said.

Join the conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful
conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments,
we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful,
threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent
or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law,
regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.